Applying Goals-Question-Metrics to Software Development Management

"If you can not measure it, you can not improve it". With that mantra on mind many people has tried to measure almost anything to success in their projects, and management tools usually provide tons o …

“If you can not measure it, you can not improve it”. With that mantra on mind many people has tried to measure almost anything to success in their projects, and management tools usually provide tons of metrics. But it’s also well known that “power is nothing without control”. Sometimes metrics can also play against our main goals as a project. And we all know about worse scenarios when metrics are tied to payments and how bad that path can go over time. During this talk, we will describe how to apply GQM Methodology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GQM) and “continuous improvement” to our software development projects to have a customized dynamic framework to let project and community managers achieve their goals, or at least, understand how the project is performing towards them. The talk will show some live examples, even of how the same metric can be good or bad depending on the target.